UEA Medicine course

Hi, what are the interviews for medicine like at UEA?

Hi, what are the interviews for medicine like at UEA?

Hi! I'm a fourth year medic at UEA. The above links are really great, in general I would say (from my experience, which was a while ago!) the interview had a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, which was nice because it meant I didn't get flustered. One thing that's not clear on the links above - before each station you get a little time, a minute I think, to read the questions and topics they'll discuss with you. This is great because it means you're not put on the spot like you can be in a panel interview. It's exactly how real OSCEs work too. Another thing to note - I'm not sure if the stations described in that article are accurate or not, they seem roughly the kind of things you'll be asked about, but if you go there and they're a bit different, please don't be put off.

In terms of what they're looking for, at UEA the interviews are very much about you as a person, exploring things like empathy, compassion, decision making, interest in medicine, capacity for work-life balance, motivation to self-study. Generally whether you're the kind of person who would make a good doctor/UEA medical student, as opposed to whether you're smart enough, they know that already from your grades. I really think it's unlikely you'll be asked questions on science or to prove your knowledge (disclaimer - it could have changed since me!). In terms of more specific pointers, I would really recommend you have a decent knowledge of PBL (what it means, roughly how it works at UEA, what the benefits and cons of it might be, how it would suit you, why you chose a PBL course etc etc) and to be familiar with your personal statement (what you did on work experience, how it made you feel and how you reflected on it, what you learned from it about life as a doctor or about medicine as a profession, what you get from your hobbies and ECs etc).

I am more than happy to answer any questions about UEA, how our course works, or anything at all. Don't hesitate to ask

Hi there Cam,

How are you finding studying medicine at UEA?
What do you feel are the pros and cons of the course and life at UEA? Do you have regular clinical workshops/simulations where you get taught procedures etc? (for example, how to give injections)
I have an offer from UEA and Plymouth and am quite stumped on what to firm, any advice would be much appreciated!Thank you!

Hi, so I saw that the only entry for UEA was seven years ago, so I thought I'd put up an updated version. If anyone is thinking of applying and has any questions about UEA, feel free to PM or quote me

• Integrated teaching – for me, this is the biggest plus of the UEA course. All of our learning is totally integrated, meaning that we're meeting patients and learning clinical skills from week one of year one. We go to a GP surgery one day a week throughout the course, with a GP tutor who has the whole day dedicated to us, where we put our learning into practice and meet patients. At my point of the course – fourth year - we're often sitting in the actual GP and nurse clinics and leading the whole consultation and examinations, checking our findings and plans with the GP supervising us. We also spend three months each year on hospital placements, where we're on the wards, in clinics/theatre, or having clinical teaching. Obviously this kind of learning isn't for everyone, you might find it too intense right at the beginning of the course, but for me I think this is the best way to learn to become a doctor. It's amazing how quickly you develop confidence and good communication skills learning this way, and I think it makes the stuff you learn in lectures relevant and interesting, and makes you a better doctor imo. The GMC recently did a big survey of all foundation doctors, and UEA graduates had the highest percentage of doctors saying they were well-prepared for work as a doctor than any other UK medical school, so they must be doing something right!

• Systems-based learning – so our course is split up into systems-based modules, for example in second year the three modules are cardiology, respiratory and haem/derm. Each module consists of eight weeks of campus-based teaching and four weeks of secondary care. The eight weeks of campus teaching split the module into eight chunks, for example in cardiology there is a week on arrhythmias and collapse, a week on acute coronary syndrome, a week on hypertension. One week doesn't sound like loads of time, but the week is structured so we can maximise the time the best – we meet in our PBL groups to discuss what we need to learn and go over last week’s teaching, we have three days of lectures and seminars, and then we go to GP where we meet patients with those conditions and learn the relevant clinical skills, then we consolidate our knowledge in our PBL groups again with discussion and presentations. There's so much opportunity to flag up if you're unsure about something, and it works to really reinforce your knowledge. Then after eight weeks of this we spend four weeks in hospital, which I talked about above. This again helps us reinforce our knowledge in that specialty and learn more specialist clinical skills, like suturing

• Small-group teaching – so much of our learning is in small groups, which means that there's so much opportunity to ask questions and get help if there's anything you're stuck on. There's a three hour PBL session each week in PBL groups of ten, there's a whole day at GP each week in the same PBL groups, in secondary care we’re in small teaching groups, most of our campus-based seminar teaching is in groups of about 40 so it's not so daunting to put your hand up and ask something

• Feedback – UEA are really good with feedback and they're always open to doing their best to change the course if there's something we don't agree with, which is fantastic. For example, when I was in first year our anatomy teaching wasn't great – although all of us could do full body dissections, the teaching was very didactic and hard to engage with. So we fed this back to the medical school, and now the teaching is amazing, there's surgeons and radiologists who join in the teaching, it's more enthusiastic, there's extra workshops, there's tons of models and books for people who struggle to get stuff out of the dissection. Also when I was in first year we had parallel seminars in our first module – when two or three seminars were going on at the same time and we had to choose which to attend. Again we fed this back, and the course director worked really hard to work the timetable so now the current first years don't even know what a parallel seminar is

• Student Support - there's loads of support available within the med school, there's a whole team of really good advisors who help students who are maybe struggling academically, or having physical or mental health troubles. They're specific to med so they understand the pressures we're under, and they're really good at providing support and helping to take off pressure off

• Com skills – we get loads of consultation skills teaching, with actors in small groups, so we can develop our skills and practise in a safe space. For example, I recently had a session on breaking bad news, which is great to practise with an actor, and a session on paediatric triadic consultations with children from a local school.

• Anatomy – all students get to do full-body dissection in small groups throughout the course, alongside anatomy seminars, radiology teaching etc, which is really useful. I think they're now starting to integrate some ultrasound teaching into the anatomy labs in the lower years too

• Transport – throughout the course we get transport provided to all placements outside of Norwich, which includes the vast majority of GP placements and three of the four teaching hospitals (the fourth is literally next to the uni), which is so handy and I understand is quite unusual

• UEA and Norwich – I think UEA is a fantastic uni in general. It's friendly and sociable, and has loads of green space (massive lake and woods). There's always stuff going on – last year we had Radio 1’s Big Weekend with Muse, Foos, Swifty, Snoop Dogg, Imagine Dragons etc, and we had the second Avengers film filmed here the year before, with RDJ, Samuel L Jackson, Scarlett Johanssen etc on campus. Norwich is such a lovely city, it has a bustling centre with great shopping, but it's still a medieval city with cool winding little streets, a gorgeous river, loads of quirky shops and great pubs. Plus it's in the sunniest county in the UK so what's not to love!


Things that might not be for you (it's hard to call them ‘cons’ as for me these actually suit me and my learning really well, but maybe not for everyone)

• Because there's no preclinical/clinical divide, some people feel that they could use more grounding in the basic sciences at the start of the course. For me this has never really been an issue, as pure science isn't really what interests me – I can only really find things interesting so far as I can see them applied – but I know some people who have been frustrated by this. Having said that, there is always the support out there if you had any questions or wanted some guidance on what basic science would be helpful to cover, and we do have lots of lectures on the core sciences, they're just more spread through the year

• Small group learning might not be for everyone. I am on my fourth PBL group and never had so much as an argument in a single one of them, and for most people this is the case. However if there was a real personality clash, you'd have to learn how to work with that, as you have PBL every week and spend your whole GP day plus com skills with the group. I do know a few people who have had to work around this, but tbh when you're working in a team as a doctor, if you don't get on with someone you still have to learn to work with them, and PBL definitely teaches you to work in a team. Learning to learn in a team, helping each other whilst not letting your learning be dependent on others, is a tricky skill that takes a while to get used to

• Module 1 length – the first half of first year is a module that aims to introduce you to the way the course works, by having a module that goes over the “human lifecycle” from birth to death. This allows you to learn some basic science, get to grips with how PBL and placement works, and generally ease you into life as a med student. This is a fantastic idea. BUT it lasts half of the year (in year one there's only two modules: this and ortho/rheum) which in most people's opinions is way too long. By the end of it you'll be itching to get stuck into some proper medicine. Module 1 is far better than it was when I took it, as I said above there are no more parallel seminars, but it would be great if this module was a bit shorter

I hope that's useful if anybody reading is considering UEA, and like I said feel free to ask if there's any more you'd like to know

Hi there! I would really like to apply to UEA, I have a UKCAT score of 690 and was wondering whether that would be enough? Do they look at individual subset scores? Thanks very much!!

Hi kayasparkles,

From my last year's experience, UEA require you to have a ukcat minimum of 2400 overall, they don't have subset cut offs. But please check their page to see if this has changed! I had 680 average, was interviewed and now I am already enjoying it here 690 is great!


This is what's currently on their page:

UK Clinical Aptitude TestALL applicants are required to take the UKCAT Medical Admissions Test in the summer prior to submitting their application, i.e. in June-October 2016.While we include consideration of your Cognitive UKCAT score within our selection process WE DO NOT HAVE A CUT OFF VALUE. However, from our experience, it is unusual for an applicant with a UKCAT score lower than the 3rd decile to be invited to interview. In 2015 this was a score in the region of 2400. In 2016 the Decision Analysis sub section is being replaced by a Decision Making sub section. The score for this element is not being released in 2016. Therefore we expect that it will be unlikely for an applicant to be invited to interview with a UKCAT score of less than 1800. Please note that we do not currently use the SJT banding within the selection process.I hope that helps.Good luck!

Thanks so much! Seems like such a cool place to study 😊. When did you find out you were invited for an interview?

Hi! I'm a fourth year medic at UEA. The above links are really great, in general I would say (from my experience, which was a while ago!) the interview had a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, which was nice because it meant I didn't get flustered. One thing that's not clear on the links above - before each station you get a little time, a minute I think, to read the questions and topics they'll discuss with you. This is great because it means you're not put on the spot like you can be in a panel interview. It's exactly how real OSCEs work too. Another thing to note - I'm not sure if the stations described in that article are accurate or not, they seem roughly the kind of things you'll be asked about, but if you go there and they're a bit different, please don't be put off.


In terms of what they're looking for, at UEA the interviews are very much about you as a person, exploring things like empathy, compassion, decision making, interest in medicine, capacity for work-life balance, motivation to self-study. Generally whether you're the kind of person who would make a good doctor/UEA medical student, as opposed to whether you're smart enough, they know that already from your grades. I really think it's unlikely you'll be asked questions on science or to prove your knowledge (disclaimer - it could have changed since me!). In terms of more specific pointers, I would really recommend you have a decent knowledge of PBL (what it means, roughly how it works at UEA, what the benefits and cons of it might be, how it would suit you, why you chose a PBL course etc etc) and to be familiar with your personal statement (what you did on work experience, how it made you feel and how you reflected on it, what you learned from it about life as a doctor or about medicine as a profession, what you get from your hobbies and ECs etc).

I am more than happy to answer any questions about UEA, how our course works, or anything at all. Don't hesitate to ask

Hi Cam!

Thank you for all the information in your replies on this thread. It's really helpful and I appreciate it a lot.

I'm deciding on a 4th university to apply to for medicine this year and I'm stuck between Southampton and UEA

I read somewhere that the facilitators in UEA's PBL sessions aren't subject experts so wouldn't be able to answer any questions...is that true? and if so has that ever been an issue?
I like the idea of small group teaching/independent learning that PBL entails but what if you end up learning the wrong thing or not enough?

What grades do I need to have in A levels to enter a Medicine course in any university. I'm currently doing GCSE's and I was thinking about being a surgery doctor in the future. What subject should need to pick in A levels?

Thanks

Hey Guys
Does anyone know when UEA will start sending out offers for interview? If you guys are anything like me you will be absolutely desperate to find out about interviews!!
Thanks xx